Apple Pay rival receives August release date

CurrentC, a mobile payment application developed by Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) is set to be released in August after nearly three years in development.

The mobile payment application represents a consortium created in 2012, containing three of the largest retailers in the United States – Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy.

According to Bloomberg, the technology will receive a limited trial run in select U.S stores in August.

The CurrentC app uses a QR code system instead of Apple Pay’s near field communication (NFC) technology.

MCX has a lot of work to do if it intends on catching up with the likes of Android Pay and Apple Pay.

Despite being months behind its competitors in terms of a release date, CurrentC has already been slated by its critics, with payment aficionados claiming that the technology only exists because retailers want tighter control over consumer transactions, as well as avoiding credit card fees imposed by Apple Pay.

Even though the app hasn’t been released yet, MCX has also encountered security concerns. In October 2014, CurrentC was hacked as it was entering a test period.

Regardless of all its problems, CurrentC is expected to make its debut in August. Scott Rankin, MCX’s chief operating officer, confirmed in an e-mail that CurrentC will be launching sometime this year.

‘‘We expect there to be more than one successful player in mobile payments, and we expect to be one of them,’’ said Rankin.

I caught up with Guillaume Andre, Head of Marketing, Ingenico Northern Europe, to discuss the implications of a tech giant-payments provider collaboration-led future, and how Ingenico and Google might continue to innovate the POS system in the future.

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